


you take a notebook into battle but all your pages burn

by allovera



Category: Final Fantasy Type-0
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, End-Game spoilers, Gen, POV Second Person, Video Game Mechanics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-09 06:00:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14710433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allovera/pseuds/allovera
Summary: déjà vu, cater had called it.





	you take a notebook into battle but all your pages burn

you scratch a note into yourself, praying, _‘don’t you dare forget this it’s important we could be **wrong** and’_

you blink

there is blood on your palm, for some reason, and deuce gives you a shaky smile as she heals it away

—

you’re five feet away from the bridge, head rattling with the faint echoes of sirens and the distant thuds of mechs. running, constantly running, and against your will you falter.

the air is wrong.

cinque casts you a quick look as she runs past, a tight smile and furrowed brows, but you can’t answer. something has been skirting at the back of your mind this entire mission, something intangible yet weighted that darts your eyes across every room even as the last enemy falls. her mace is light in her grasp, caked with blood and oil and the faint smell of magic, and you start to tell her to ready herself.

there is a figure immediately in front of you.

you don’t need the radio in your ear to tell you who he is. there was no sound as he flew, barely even the perception of movement, but his adorned sleeves flutter to a halt as he stares you down. his mask is cold and heavy but something beyond the metal makes you reach out to cinque, to queen, to cater, to —

cinque is in the air, a beam of light piercing through her neck.

cinque is on the ground, and nimbus is gone.

you wouldn’t know the body was cinque’s if she was dead, you tell yourself, but she’s not moving. it’s still her, your mind screams, but her neck is burned black and ace is shaking violently. 

“it didn’t hurt,” you hear yourself say. 

ace stares at you, not comprehending. 

“when it was me, it didn’t hurt.”

—

eight’s arm is flung over your shoulder, a counter too late and his stomach splayed open. 

the air is frigid and dry, snow soaking into your boots and a disconcerting numbness in your toes, but you push forward to the rendezvous point with as much speed as you can manage. you had healed it as best you could, the caked blood on your palms gritty, but you’re exhausted and his face is still pale.

only a few more minutes until the edge of the mountain range, until you can collapse and pass eight off to someone more capable of this. the sky is still gray, has been gray ever since alexander burned it down, and you find yourself caught in a daydream of a day spent curled in a sea of pillows.

“it’s fine,” he reassures, shifting to take more of his weight back, “not the worst hit i’ve gotten.”

you are aware of that. you also know the dead weight of carrying his body over your shoulder as his blood cakes the snow.

you don’t say anything.

—

déjà vu, cater had called it.

you had been in ingram, overlooking a highway of moving automata and bustling imperials. it was a city of metals, skies overcast and a perpetual hum of machinery and grinding heels. the dark looks that skittered across your body hadn’t phased you, but at noon when the sun pierced through the clouds you briefly recalled coughing out blood over the railing.

“maybe you read about it in a textbook,” you said, and wondered what it would be like to recall cities instead of suffocating.

—

you begin taking notes in margins. small things, inconsequential, that get you little more than a questioning glance from the commander and a flitting feeling in your gut. what the sky was like today, how many times sice cracked her knuckles during a lecture, or how often you remembered a death you didn’t die - small, wispy things. you hesitate to call it a journal, or even a record. it just feels - comfortable. nice. 

she had asked about it, once, having borrowed your book in a rare show of interest.

“ ‘raining, and a set of teeth against my throat i can’t force off.’ the hell’s that?”

you felt a blush rising to your cheeks after a moment - honestly, it sounded like a line from one of those novels queen was so secretly fond of - and reached over to look.

“what are you talking about?”

sice frowned and pulled the book closer to her chest, flicking through the pages towards the back.

“you wrote it. you write a lot of weird stuff in your books,” she said, stopping at a new page, “ ’the sun in my eyes and fire burning my lungs’ - shit like that. it’s almost like poetry or something, but … “

she stopped, eyebrows furrowed further. 

the sun had glared off jack’s sword, and you unconsciously shielded your eyes as the flames overtook your body. you remember screaming and the fire traveling down your throat before you passed out. you woke up in corsï, leaning against king. the sun had set.

“but what?” you asked. suddenly you felt tired.

sice closed the book with a snap and turned away.

“nevermind.”

you start misplacing more and more of your books after that, but you always find them in the end.

—

it’s in the middle of dodging an errant gunshot that you realize you’re doing it to be remembered. 

the aim was erratic, the soldier pinned to the ground beneath nine’s spear, and the bullet clips through your left shoulder just as king shoots the soldier in the head. it’s quiet, and the pain is muted as you pass a hand over the blood. 

once, the bullet had been aimed to the right. once, you were carried to the nearest town, breath shallow and thoughts buzzing, as king tried not to hurt you more.

you’ve all died before, you know. you’ve seen mother’s magic weave together bones and sinew to form people over and over again, been covered in someone else’s blood as they sauntered besides you, but somehow the memory always slips away and you can’t recall the moment you saw them shatter. somehow you all remained alive, whole and undaunted.

you don’t think this happens to other people, but you’re not sure how to ask. 

“hey, seven.”

the air shifts, and you look up to find nine closer than you thought. he looks confused, hair tousled and breath even.

“king said we’re good to go, so let’s get moving.”

he sounds like he’s repeating himself, voice slower, more formal. 

you nod, and the wound is gone.

—

**Author's Note:**

> Despite writing drabbles on and off for most of my life, I've never actually posted anything before. Based a lot in headcanons - mostly about how Arecia revives her kids whenever they enter a town, and how that would play out.


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